Prize environmentalist
Craig Williams is like the local landmark you take for granted until a stranger comes along and says "wow'' or, in this case, presents him with an international prize.
So, what makes this Berea-based thorn in the Pentagon's side worthy of the Goldman Environmental Prize that he received, along with $125,000, this week in San Francisco?
What puts him in the same league as previous winners, eight of whom went on to hold national office in their countries and one of whom won the 2004 Nobel Peace Prize?
A couple of things.
Williams didn't just say "hell no'' to burning chemical weapons in his adopted Madison County. He and his shoestring organization researched and pushed for safer ways to eliminate these lethal Cold War leftovers.
Williams' successful advocacy of safer disposal methods is a testament to his smarts but also to his willingness to tackle a scientific problem that would make most of us glaze over.
Williams sets an example for all who care about the environment or the future. Finding better alternatives is the challenge in this era when humankind has come to depend on technologies that are frying the planet.
You can't very well say hell no to the internal combustion engine and coal-fired power without also saying here are the alternatives and then demanding and supporting sustainable technologies.
It's noteworthy too that Williams' environmentalism is anything but the Not In My Backyard variety. His expertise -- and activism -- stretch from the poor minority neighborhoods that surround the Army's weapons incinerators in Anniston, Ala., and Pine Bluff, Ark., to the former Soviet Union's chemical weapons stockpiles.
Williams and his Chemical Weapons Working Group have documented how the Army's incineration program continues a pattern of environmental injustice in poor communities that have already suffered more than their share of pollution.
Lucky for us that when the Army said in 1984 that it was going to burn chemical weapons in Kentucky, Williams and his wife, Teri, were willing to sacrifice financially while he organized a grass-roots movement that this week gave him a global platform from which to say: "We must not leave the health of our families and protection of the world ecology to corporations, governments and military organizations preoccupied with profit, power and armed conquest. Rather we must take that responsibility into our own hands."